


The Devil You Know

by rosa_acicularis



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-18
Updated: 2011-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 08:10:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_acicularis/pseuds/rosa_acicularis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Better the devil you know. Rose and the Doctor after Journey's End.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The TARDIS fades from sight, and he takes her hand. He looks at her, and finds that she is already looking at him.

Her eyes are wide. “He’s really gone? Forever?”

He nods. 

The sunlight turns her pale hair to gold, and Rose smiles. “Well,” she says, “that’s a fucking relief.”

The armoured trucks arrive a few minutes later.

++

Clever people make mistakes just like anyone else.

This is something the Doctor would do better to remember.

++

“What,” he says, “no chains?”

She sits in the chair opposite his, the table between them. He is not restrained, and she is unarmed. The door is locked. She laughs a little – a sweet, familiar sound. “Like we have any that could hold you.”

His nose wrinkles. “Is that flattery?”

“Sort of.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I admit, I expected an escape attempt or two by now. It’s not like you haven’t got out of worse scrapes.”

He shrugs. “No sonic screwdriver.”

“Yeah, right. As if that’s ever stopped you.” She leans forward, resting her chin in the palm of her hand. “So why _are_ you sticking around? Curiosity? Apathy?” She grins. “Misguided affection?”

“How about muscular young Torchwood security personnel with very large guns?”

Her grin disappears. “They wouldn’t shoot you. I gave the order myself.”

He inclines his head in an ironic nod. “Commandant Rose Marion Tyler, ever the gracious host.”

“I do what I can.” She sits back and folds her hands on the table in front of her. “You must be very angry with me.”

“I’m worried.”

She touches one hand to her chest, over her heart. “About me? How sweet.”

“I know you, Rose. You wouldn’t do this.”

“And yet, I have. It’s really quite the puzzle.” She looks down, and he sees the dark circles under her eyes, almost hidden by makeup. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. This is really me, in my right mind, perfectly aware of what I’ve done.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know why you’re surprised. You know what Torchwood is like.”

His lips twist in distaste. “ _If it’s alien, it’s ours._ ”

“I see you’ve read our brochure.” She crosses her legs and rests one elbow on the table. She studies her fingernails. “You haven’t asked yet what we plan to do with you.”

“I can guess.”

“Yes. Well, you’re very clever.”

“Very. And yet, there’s still something I can’t quite explain.”

She looks up. “Oh?”

“Torchwood knew when and where the TARDIS would land on this side of the Void. They were waiting.” He gives her a polite, thin-lipped smile. “You were expecting me.”

For a moment, her face is pale, expressionless. Then she laughs. “You know, in some ways, Doctor, you are entirely predictable.” She stands. “You’ll be taken back to your cell now. I’ll come down to visit again soon.”

“I look forward to it.” 

If she recognises the sarcasm in his voice, she doesn’t acknowledge it. She smoothes her palms over her skirt, gives him a small nod, and turns to the door. He stops her with her name.

She turns back, her hand on the doorknob. “Yes?”

“What did you tell your mum? About where I’ve gone?”

She smiles crookedly, and he sees the girl she was in her eyes. “I think,” she says, “that after the last few years even my mum has learnt not to ask those sorts of questions.” She knocks hard on the small window in the door; a moment later, the door unlocks with an audible whoosh. “You should try to escape. It might make you feel better.”

She leaves, and the door locks behind her.

“I feel fine,” he says to the empty room. “Just fine.”

++

His cell is almost comfortable.

White walls, white chair, white bed with white sheets and a white pillow. His suit and hair and skin lend the room its only colour, and there are no shadows.  

He watches the white of the ceiling, eyes open wide, and thinks of absolutely nothing as one heart beats in his chest.

Two days pass before he sees her again.

++

“No one’s tried to dissect me yet.”

She can’t hide her wince, but she tries. “The dissection comes after the interrogation. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” He leans forward, letting his hands slide past the center of the table. Close to hers. “No one’s interrogated me yet, either.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

“Oh, of course. Silly me. You’ve been – well, _on the job_ , let’s say – since our oh-so-dramatic reunion.” He sits back in his chair, scratching his neck. “Though, strictly speaking, that was _him_ , not me.” He smiles. “Did he spill anything juicy to his long lost love?”

“That information is classified,” she says, returning his hard smile with one of her own. “Sorry.”

“You make a terrible bureaucrat.”

“You make an excellent prisoner.”

“Well, I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“I remember.” She looks down at her hands, at the table. “You want to hear something funny?”

He stares at the top of her head, her pink scalp and the pale roots of her hair. “Absolutely. I’m dying for a good laugh.”  
   
She curls her fingers, lacing them together. “I thought it would be impossible, lying to him. To you. I didn’t think I’d be able to go through with it.” She looks up. “It was so easy I nearly laughed myself sick.” 

There is a long silence. He clears his throat. “You didn’t come find me because the stars were going out.”

She shakes her head. “It’s complicated.”

“Rose. Remember who you’re talking to.”

“Like you’d let me forget.” She sighs and looks at him with old eyes. “There were things that needed to be done. Pulling Donna out of that parallel world, making sure you were both in place on the Crucible. I didn’t know about the meta-crisis, not exactly, but I knew how it would end.” She gestures to the table between them. “You and me, like this.”

“How? How did you know?”

She shrugs. “It was in the memo.”

“ _Rose_.”

She chuckles. “You seem to think that I owe you an explanation.” She leans forward. “I really don’t.”

He reaches across the table and takes her hand. “Rose, listen to me. I can help. Whatever’s happened, whatever’s made you do this, you know I can stop it.”

She stares down at his fingers curved around hers, her face empty. “I’m sorry,” she says. She pulls her hand away. “It doesn’t work like that anymore.”

“How does it work?”

She won’t meet his eyes. “I do what needs doing, and I do it alone.”

“Well,” he says through his teeth, his temper beginning to fray. “That’s very John Wayne of you.”

“I like to think so.” She stands. “I have to leave the city for a few days. I’ll be back before it’s time for your transfer.” 

He drops his hands into his lap, his fingers curling into fists. “My transfer?”

“We’ll talk again soon.” She nods to him, the very picture of curt professionalism. “Doctor.”

He has seen her face still and trapped in stone, has carved it himself with a hammer and chisel and chipped away at pale marble until her eyes stared back at him. 

He has never seen her look so cold.  

“You know,” he says, “I’ve only just realised.” He sits back and folds his arms over his chest. “I have absolutely no idea who you are.”

A slow, sad smile spreads across her face, and she holds out her hand. “Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth. Nice to meet you.”

++

She’s gone for two weeks.

They let him out of his cell for brief periods, for walks up and down empty corridors and showers in the abandoned employee gym. One of the guards sneaks him a stack of paperbacks – murder mysteries and Regency romances with broken spines and tea stains. He reads them all in half an hour, and then he reads them again.

It’s four o’clock in the afternoon on his eighteenth day held prisoner in the Torchwood Institute when his guards lead him to the interrogation room in handcuffs.

He sits across from her empty chair and waits.

++

“You’re not Rose Tyler.”

The little bearded man in the white lab coat laughs and shakes his head. “You must be horribly disappointed; I certainly would be.” He wipes his hand on his coat – smearing a bit of raspberry jam across the lapel – and offers it for a handshake. “I’m Simon. Well, Dr. Price. Dr. Simon Price. But you should call me Simon. Such an honour to finally meet you – I’m absolutely over the moon.”

After a moment’s hesitation the Doctor reaches to take the man’s hand, but Price startles at the clink of the handcuffs. He strides back to the door and presses his face to the small window at its center. “Morrison, you blockhead. You forgot to remove his restraints.”

The door opens with a pneumatic sigh and Morrison pokes his head through. “Ms. Tyler’s orders, I’m afraid, sir. While she’s away—”

Price dismisses this with a wave of his hand. “Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. I know you have your duty, Morrison, and I trust Ms. Tyler’s judgment to the utmost, but I think on this one small matter we must find her to be somewhat overcautious.” He points to the Doctor. “Now remove this man’s shackles at once.”

The guard sighs and pulls a key from his belt. He steps over to the table and unlocks the handcuffs. “They’re not really shackles, sir. Technically speaking—”

“That’s enough, Morrison, thank you. I’ll let you know when we’re done.” The guard leaves, and Price takes the seat at the other side of the table. “Well, that’s that taken care of.”   
         
The Doctor stares at him. “I’m sorry, but who the hell are you?”

“Didn’t I introduce myself? My goodness, what a doddering old fool I’ve become.” He takes the Doctor’s hand from the tabletop and gives it a vigorous shake. “Dr. Simon Price, head scientific advisor here at Torchwood London. Our young Ms. Tyler’s second in command, one might say.”

“How nice for you. I’m the Doctor.” He pauses. “Though I get the feeling you already knew that.”

Price laughs. “Yes, quite. Been hearing stories about you for years – it’s always ‘the Doctor said this’ and ‘the Doctor blew up that.’” He gives the Doctor a grin. “Don’t know if you ever noticed, but the lady in question once fancied you something dreadful.”

“Really. Did she.” He folds his arms. “Must be terribly awkward for her, having to imprison me like this.”

Price’s good humour evaporates, and his round face is suddenly solemn. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You make an excellent point.” He leans forward. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

Price shakes his head. “It’s not my place, and it’s certainly not the time.” He sweeps one hand over the table, as if brushing the subject aside. “No matter. I’ve not come to indulge such morbid thoughts; I have a happier mission before me.” He smiles beatifically. “Our Rose once told me that you were in possession of – wonder of wonders – a _screwdriver_ designed to emit _high frequency sonic waves_.”

The Doctor opens his mouth, then closes it again. “You want me to tell you how to make a sonic screwdriver?”

Price raises his hand to his heart. “Heavens no! Perish the thought. Rose assured me that you would never tamper with human technological development in such a reckless fashion.” His smile turns hopeful. “But maybe just a hint?”

The Doctor blinks, twice. “Dr. Price—”

“Simon.”

“Simon, you are either the worst interrogator I’ve ever met or by far the very best.”  
     
Price chuckles, but there is little humour in it. “You are not here to give us information, Doctor. If you were, we would have finished with you on your first day.” He sits back and scratches his chin, running his fingernails through his short, greying beard. His eyes are large, red-rimmed and sad. He smiles. “I think I’d like to make a screwdriver. I’m tired of weapons – cannons and poisons and detonators. I’d like something small, something useful. Something...innocent.”

“Quite.” The Doctor taps his fingers against the tabletop. “And how long would it be, do you think, before you tired of innocent toys and started to churn out sonic explosives, sonic blasters, sonic cannons—”

Price closes his eyes, shaking his head. “No, no, no. It’s not like that at all; you have it all wrong.” He folds his hands together and rests his knuckles against his chin. “She told us that you wouldn’t understand. She told us, but we couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like, a world without—” He stops. “Your universe must be so different.”

“It’s only parallel.” The Doctor frowns. “And I’ve been to this universe before, you know.”

“Yes, during the Cybus incident. I remember.” He studies the Doctor’s face for a long moment. “Mickey Smith told me you were with my wife when she died.”

The Doctor’s response is blankness, an empty stare. Then he understands, and he cannot hide his flinch. “Mrs. Moore. Your wife was Mrs. Moore.”

“Angela Price. Yes.” He looks away. “Mickey and Jake Simmonds found me not long after. That’s when I quit my job at Cybus Industries and came to work for Torchwood.”

“Trading the devil you know for the devil you don’t.”

Price laughs softly. “More like jumping from the frying pan to the fire. But at least these days I know why I’m burning.”

The Doctor drops his hands to his lap and brushes his thumb over the fading pink lines left behind by the handcuffs. “Your wife was a remarkable woman.”

“She was.” Price smiles, a fond, absent expression. “An absolute fiend for gadgets, my Angela. She would’ve loved a sonic screwdriver.”   

“Now, now, Simon,” the Doctor says, not unkindly. “We both know you’re not here to ask me about a screwdriver.”

“Oh dear. You’ve seen through my clever ruse.” Price stands and reaches into the pocket of his lab coat. “While I’m afraid, Doctor, that I cannot tell you why you were brought here—”

“Because it’s not your place.”

“Because Rose asked me very nicely not to, and she never does anything without good reason.”

The Doctor has to tilt his head back slightly to meet the other man’s eyes. “You trust her.”

Price nods, slowly. “With my life. With the lives of my children.” He pauses. “With every terrible weapon and instrument of destruction I have ever designed.”   

“What has she done to earn your trust?”

Price pulls a small silver tube from his lab coat and slips it into the inside breast pocket of the Doctor’s blue suit. “And what exactly,” he says, “has she done to lose yours?”

The Doctor reaches for the tube, a question on his lips, but Price stops him with a shake of his head.

“Not quite sonic, but one of my more successful prototypes. It’ll open any lock in the building.” He winks. “I was hoping you might give me some feedback for further improvements.”

The interrogation room door flies open and Rose stalks in, her heels clicking against the floor. “Simon, have you _lost_ your _mind_?”

Price steps away from the Doctor and raises his hands in a gesture of innocent appeal. “You’re back early, Director Tyler. I do hope nothing’s gone wrong on—”

She grabs Price by the elbow to silence him, her expression fierce, almost frightened. “Are you mad? I can’t even begin to – have you gone absolutely bloody _insane_?” She reels on the Doctor.  “What did he tell you?”

Price steps between them. “Rose, I sabotaged the security feeds. No one is watching.”

Rose pales, and for a moment the Doctor thinks she might slap the other man. Instead she pulls Price to the door, steps in close and says something low and heated that makes him close his eyes and take a deep shuddering breath. He leaves the room without looking back.

The Doctor swings his feet onto the table. “I like him.”

She laughs, somewhat shakily, and sits on the edge of the table. Her suit is rumpled, her expensive shoes coated in a thin, white dust. “Why am I not surprised?”

“You should give him a raise.”  
     
“If he hasn’t just signed his own death warrant, I might.” She rubs her hand over her face. “Sometimes I think I’ve become too much like you. Telling people only what I think they need to know, and nothing more.”

“I’ve never really been known for my management skills.”

“No kidding.” She stands, running her fingers through her hair. “You were a leader once, though. A general.”

There is an airless silence. “How do you know that?”

She meets his eyes, her expression unfathomable. He rises from his chair and takes her hand. Her fingers are cold in his.

“Rose, tell me. Who’s watching?”

She pulls her hand free and raises it to his chest, to his single heartbeat and the small silver tube waiting in his suit coat pocket. Her fingers follow its outline, and she smiles. “No one you need to worry about.” She steps back, and he sees something like relief in her face. “Goodbye, Doctor,” she says, and leaves.

When he is escorted back to his cell, there is no mention of handcuffs.

++

He hadn’t been in the Torchwood building for more than ten minutes before he’d come up with an escape plan.

It’s simple enough, really. Locks are just locks and doors are just doors, and he is, after all, the Doctor. He can leave any time he wishes.

But first he has to know why.

++

He’s lying in bed two days later when the security camera overhead explodes in a shower of sparks. A small puff of smoke follows, and when it clears the camera lens is little more than a black smudge on the ceiling.

The cell door opens with a hiss. “Uh oh,” Rose says. “Looks like someone overloaded the security system.” She closes the door behind her. “We’ll have to get a man in.”

He sits up, and the tile floor is cold against his bare feet. “You people spend an awful lot of your time sabotaging yourselves.”

She laughs. “Oh, you have no idea.” She leans back against the door and for a long moment they watch each other in silence. Her suit today is simple grey wool, her hair pale and pinned neatly back. She looks like money.

She looks tired.

He nods to the chair beside the bed. “Are you going to sit down?”

“No.” She steps away from the door and crosses her arms over her chest. “Doctor, why are you still here?”

He scratches at the stubble growing on his chin; he hasn’t shaved yet today. “Where else would I go, exactly?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere.” She frowns. “And since when do you hesitate to wander off into the unknown?”

He shrugs. “Since when do you pay two hundred quid for a pair of shoes?”

Her expression softens somewhat, and for a moment she looks like she might laugh at him. “Not even close. But thanks for noticing.” 

“Well, I notice all sorts of things. For example.” He stands and slips his hands into his pockets. “Those are the same shoes you wore two days ago. Only – and this is the part that you’ll find particularly impressive, I think – two days ago I noticed that those stylish yet practical heels were coated in a fine white dust. The sort of dust one finds at construction sites where extremely high-density metals are manipulated by extremely advanced equipment.” He steps closer, leaning in. “Now, I know this universe runs a few years ahead of ours, and so some discrepancies in technological advancement are to be expected, but still I wonder: what kind of world is it that can build void hoppers and cybernetic men, and yet still travels by zeppelin?”

She takes a stumbling step back. “I don’t—”

He grips her arm. “No, Rose. No lies. Your Dr. Price is a clever man, no doubt about it, but for him sonic tools are the stuff of science fiction. Do you really expect me to believe that he and his crack team of Torchwood scientists designed that dimension cannon of yours?”

Her eyes are wide. “I—” She swallows. “I expected you to be gone by now.”    

His hold on her arm loosens; he steps back. “Well,” he says, “I’m sorry to disappoint.”

She shakes her head, and a note of desperation enters her voice. “You don’t understand – _you shouldn’t be here_.”

“I hate to reduce these things to cold, hard logic, but if you didn’t want me to stay then you probably shouldn’t have locked the door.”

She laughs, a sharp, startling sound, and then she kisses him. Rises up onto her toes, cups his cheek with her hand, and presses her lips to his. There is something fierce in the soft, merciless pull of her mouth, in the brush of her thumb against his face. His eyes close, but he doesn’t return the kiss. His hands stay at his sides, curled into fists. 

She pulls away, and her palm lingers against his cheek. Her eyes are bright. “When I—” The words catch in her throat and she stops, looks away. Breathes. “When I first came here, I couldn’t sleep. The doctors said it was depression, or stress, or – well, you know the ridiculous things clever people say when there’s a problem they can’t solve. I tried pills and psychoanalysis and acupuncture, but nothing helped. I went for runs late at night, alone, and Mum was sure she was going to wake up one morning to hear that my body’d been found in an alley somewhere.” She chews on her bottom lip, staring past his face. “And then I got this machine. I keep it by my bed at night, and it plays the sound of the ocean or rushing rivers or whales singing. Rain against tin roofs, that sort of thing. And one of the settings, one of the sounds is just this deep, thrumming sort of white noise.” She meets his eyes. “It sounds like the TARDIS.”

He nods. “And now you can sleep.”

“No,” she says. “Now I don’t even try.”  

She is not the woman she was. He can see that now, can read it in the steadiness of her hands and the hardness in her eyes. He looks at her face and sees his own, and he begins to understand. “You’re at war,” he says. “You’re at war, and you’re losing.”

“Close,” she says, and gives him a broken smile. “But not quite.”

He takes her hands, her skin cool and soft against his. “Rose, I should tell you: you’re not half so good at enigmatic as you seem to think.”

She laughs, and a strand of pale hair falls into her face. “But I’ve been practicing.”

“Takes years to perfect; don’t be too hard on yourself.” She is not the woman she was, but the changes are themselves familiar. She is capable of a coldness he could not have imagined in her before, a coldness that grew in him over centuries, in war after war and loss after loss. There is anger behind it, an echo of his own, and he finds comfort in their complicity. Comfort and something else, something sharp-edged and new.

He drops one of her hands and steps in close, half-hoping she’ll back away.

She doesn’t.

His single heartbeat sounds impossibly loud in his ears as he reaches for the silver clip pinning back her hair. He opens it with a soft click and her hair falls, brushing her shoulders, the skin of his hand. She smells clean, like soap and shampoo and fresh, cool water and he wants to slide his cheek along hers, to breathe her in. Instead, he waits.

There is a moment of hesitation, a slow swell of possibility. Then she lays her free hand against his chest and pushes, moving with him as he moves back toward the bed. His legs hit the mattress and he sits, staring up at her. Their hands still linked, he tugs her forward until she stands between his legs and for a moment his vision blurs, overwhelmed by the reality of her, of her hips and waist and the soft curve of her breasts beneath her suit and blouse. His eyes move again to her face, and she is smiling.

“What?” he says, a little hoarsely.

“Nothing.” Her smile widens. “It’s just…surprising. That you can be such a bloke.” 

He isn’t sure whether he should defend his blokeness or deny it vehemently. He frowns and settles for sliding his palm along her thigh, past the hem of her skirt.

“Oh,” she breathes. Her eyes close, and he feels her muscles tense under his touch. Her grip on his fingers loosens, and soon both his hands are beneath her skirt, his fingers brushing her arse as he traces a path from her hips to the waistband of her nylons.  

“Take off your shoes,” he says, voice low and unfamiliar to his own ears.  She rests one hand on his shoulder and, leaning into him, steps out of her heels. She is suddenly smaller, closer, and her thumb brushes the skin of his neck. He remembers when she used to straighten his collar, her fingers lingering over black leather until he could find some excuse to move away, to gain some safe distance. Now he follows her touch, hungry for it, and his fingers slip within the elastic waist of her nylons.

She squeezes his shoulder. “Are you going to give me a hand with those, or do I have to do everything myself?”

“You’ve learned to delegate. Lovely.” He eases the nylons over her hips, his fingers brushing bare skin as he pushes them past her knees and they pool at her feet. He traces the curve of her right calf with one finger, and she shivers. “Why do you dress like this, Rose?”

“I don’t.” She glances almost self-consciously down at her suit. “At least, not when I’m in the field.”

“And here?” he says.

She meets his eyes evenly. “Because it makes me look like something I’m not.”

“What’s that?”

Her grin should have been a warning; she pulls her knickers down and straddles him, leans in close and touches her lips to his ear. “Harmless,” she says, and he feels her teeth against his skin as she smiles.

Before Canary Wharf, before the wall between them and the betrayal that followed, he touched her _(never like this, one hand smoothing over the bare skin of her arse, the other fumbling with the buttons of her suit jacket, her blouse)_ and took her hand as if she were something fragile, something he was bound to lose. It was true then, and he thinks _(her moan against his throat as he slides a hand between them, her heat pooling around his fingers)_ that it might be true still.

And yet, when she lies back against the white sheets of his prison cell bed and lets him touch her until she comes _(her fingers shaking and soft against the back of his neck while she begs him not to stop, or leave, or be lost)_ he can’t remember why he denied them this before. Why he held himself apart. She reaches for the zip of his trousers with a breathless determination and he knows: she is fragile, and he may break her.

But she will almost certainly break him.

He doesn’t last long after he sinks inside her. His heart burns in his chest – dying a little, it seems, with every thrust – and she is beautiful, watching him. Almost smiling, almost not. She tightens around him _(almost smirking)_ and he cannot help but say it, just before he comes.

“I love you,” he says, and her smirk disappears.

After, she is quiet. They lie together, sticky and cold and still half-dressed, and he watches her stare at the ceiling, at the dark smudge where the camera had been. She clears her throat. “What if I told you that I planned this? That I fucked you just so you’d be easier to manipulate?” She turns her head and meets his eyes. “Would you leave then?”

“No,” he says. “Not even if I believed you.”

She kisses him, angry and bruising, and he can hardly keep up as she slides on top of him, her hair falling around her face. She stops abruptly. “You’re a stubborn idiot,” she says, “and sometimes I hate your guts.”

“Sometimes I hate yours,” he says.

“Not enough, apparently.” She brushes her mouth over his and whispers, “Remember this and don’t repeat it, not to me or anyone else: seven, seventy-nine, sixty-four, twenty-four, thirteen.”

He sits up a little, pushing her back. “Rose, what—” Her fingernails dig into his chest, and he shuts up. He doesn’t look at the burned security camera on the ceiling, but he remembers Price’s face after Rose had whispered in his ear. Someone’s watching, camera or no camera. “Well,” he says. “That’s creepy.”

She climbs off him and off the bed, buttoning her blouse. She finds her suit jacket on the floor and shakes out the wrinkles. “We’re covered, by the way. I take an oral contraceptive, and I’m clean.” She pauses. “I assume you are as well, unless you’ve had unprotected sex with someone else in the fortnight since you grew from a disembodied hand.”

He does up his trousers and tries not to look like he’s just been slapped. “Well, Prison Guard Morrison and I have grown quite close, but we’ve always been safe,” he says. She doesn’t even smile.

She slips on her heels and then sits primly on the edge of the bed. If it weren’t for the mussed halo of her hair and the pink stubble burn around her mouth, he might wonder if he’d imagined the whole thing. “When was the last time you slept?” she asks.

He frowns at her. “I don’t know. Why does it matter?”

“You haven’t since you’ve been here, and I think you might need to.”

“Rose, you know I don’t—”

“I know. But things are different now.” She pulls something from the pocket of her suit jacket, a tiny jet injector with a syringe full of pale amber liquid. He watches, stunned, as she pulls up his sleeve, presses the injector against his skin, and pulls the trigger. “There,” she says, laying the injector aside. “I told him you wouldn’t fight me.”

The room is hazy at the edges, and her face blurs. “Rose—” As he falls he can feel a hand against his cheek, cold and solid and strangely real, but if it is her hand it must be a dream, mustn’t it, because he lost her years ago and dreams are cruel that way. He opens his mouth to tell her this, but no sound comes out.

“I’ll be there when you wake up,” she says, and she sounds so sad that he thinks it must not be her after all. He wishes it were.

“I miss you,” he says, and sleeps.

++

Seven, seventy-nine, sixty-four, twenty-four, thirteen.

He remembers.

++

He wakes up in the back of an armoured truck, slumped across a cushioned seat. His hands are bound.

“Uh oh,” Morrison says. “You aren’t supposed to be awake yet.”

The taste in his mouth is absolutely revolting, and he grimaces. The leather cushion is sticky and hot under his cheek. “Note to self,” he mutters. “The only safe sex is no sex.”

The young man’s eyes are wide and puzzled. “I’m sorry, sir?”

The Doctor pulls himself upright, swaying in his seat as the truck makes a sharp turn. “I’m the prisoner, Morrison. You don’t have to call me ‘sir’. In fact, I would rather you didn’t.”

“Oh. Sorry.” He tugs at the sleeve of his uniform, and there’s a pregnant silence. “Mickey Smith told me that you were a good man. That you were there when he and Ms. Tyler stopped the London cyber-conversions.”   
   
The Doctor smiles thinly. “You might say that.” He pauses, watching the other man’s face. “Did you lose someone?”

Morrison swallows. “Yeah,” he says. “I did.”

The Doctor nods, looking away. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” He shifts uneasily, colour rising in his cheeks. “That’s why we’re doing this, you know. We’re not bad people.”

“I know.”

Morrison shakes his head. “You don’t know anything. She didn’t want you to, was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to control you if you did. She thought you might jeopardize everything.” He leans forward, and his voice begins to shake. “We never asked for this, I swear. If it weren’t for people, for monsters like John Lumic and those other greedy – all they cared about was the technology. They said they could make the world better, that they could end poverty and hunger and war, but now they’re all dead and it’s just us, just Torchwood, and if it weren’t for Ms. Tyler I don’t know how we’d—” He stops short, breathing hard. “It was a devil’s bargain, and now she’s going to pay the price.”  

The Doctor nods. “I understand now,” he says gently. “You’re doing this to help people.”

Morrison rubs his hand over his face. “Of course. Christ. We would, I would _never_ —”

“Didn’t think for a moment that you would. I’m an excellent judge of character, you know, and I could spot your pure intentions from a mile away.” He shifts to the edge of his seat. “Now here’s my only question: what exactly _are_ you doing?”

The truck stops, and a moment later the growling engine falls silent. There’s a sharp knock on the back door, and Morrison flinches. “He’s awake,” he calls out, freeing the Doctor’s hands. “The tranq wore off too soon.”

The Doctor shrugs. “Aliens. We’re tough to prescribe for.”

Morrison’s eyes go huge. “You’re – _what_?”

“Well, only half-alien these days. Still, that makes me even more unpredictable.” He grins. “Wow. She really _doesn’t_ tell you guys much, does she?”

The truck door opens and Morrison leads him out into a vast, empty warehouse. Their footsteps echo across concrete as they walk to a rusted service lift. Morrison pushes a button, and the lift grinds to life far below. They wait.

Morrison gives him an uneasy look. “Sir, if you don’t mind me asking—”

The Doctor rolls his eyes. “Oh, go ahead.”

“What kind of alien – half-alien, I mean – are you?”

The lift arrives with a screech of metal on metal, and the Doctor slips his hands into his pockets. “The stubborn kind,” he says, and steps into the lift.

Their descent is long, silent but for the mechanical rumblings that surround them. The shadows grow deeper, and when they reach the bottom the darkness is nearly complete. Morrison fumbles with something – a circuit breaker, maybe. The room stays dark.   

The Doctor takes a breath of cool, stale air. “What is this place?”

“I don’t know. The R&D blokes call it the Stairway to Heaven.” He coughs. “I think that might be their idea of a joke.”

The lights come on.

++

It is possible to be in two places at once.

The Doctor stands in an underground Torchwood lab, but memory – living, seething memory – overwhelms the present and resurrects moments dead and gone. He is half-human, trapped in a parallel world, but tinny voices echo in his ears, the voices of friends lost to a war he’d ended over and over again. Their voices, and the smell.

He was a general, once.

++

“Huh,” Morrison says. “I thought it would be bigger.”

The Dalek transmat platform is crude and absurdly simple, obviously built by human hands. The Doctor approaches it slowly, still dazed. “Where did you get this?”

“We made it.”

The Doctor’s temper snaps. “Yes, I see that, thank you. But how did you get the design? How could you _possibly_ —” He stops, drags the back of his hand over his mouth. Stares at the transmat with wide, blank eyes. “It’s never going to be over, is it?”

Morrison takes a hesitant step forward. “Sir?”

The Doctor turns back to the other man, suddenly grinning. “Morrison, what’s that phrase people use when they’re about to do something they’d really rather not do, but that they’re going to do anyway because they don’t actually have a choice?”

“Um.” Morrison frowns. “Bite the bullet, sir?” 

“That’s the one.” He hops onto the platform. “See you in hell,” he says, and activates the transmat.


	2. Chapter 2

When he arrives on the warship, he spends his first few moments dry-heaving on Davros’ life support chair.

“Not your most dignified entrance, Doctor, but I suppose you have graver concerns just at the moment.” The mummified megalomaniac sounds amused, which is never a good sign. The chair rolls forward slightly, and the Doctor lurches away. Davros chuckles. “Please, take a moment to recover. That matter transmitter is infamously difficult to stomach. Wouldn’t you agree, Miss Tyler?”

Rose stands at Davros’ side, just behind his right shoulder. Her suit is crisp black, and she’s wearing a modest strand of pearls. “Yes, sir,” she says, her face blank.

The Doctor retches again, and Davros shakes his head, tut-tutting like a reproving schoolmarm. “And I suppose you’re still suffering the ill effects of the tranquilizer Miss Tyler gave you. She is a cunning girl, is she not?” He offers her a grimace of a smile. “Completely untrustworthy, of course. It’s what makes her such a pleasure to work with.”

The Doctor staggers to his feet. He can feel the rumble of the warship’s engines through the floor, primitive but powerful. The ship itself is small by Dalek standards, and a quick glance around the control room proves that it was designed for humanoid use, not Dalek. Human built and built for human hands, but the interior design shrieks _Exterminate_.

Davros is still smiling; it’s not doing much to alleviate the nausea. “It seems we are never meant to part for long, my friend – though this time, at least, my wait has been the greater.” He gestures to the flight console and the long observation window above it, to the distant blue-green orb of Earth nearly swallowed by darkness. His cybernetic hand glints sharply in the low light. “You must have questions.”

“No,” the Doctor says. “Not really.”

Davros frowns, gives Rose a brief glare. “Is that so.”

The Doctor sticks his hands in his pockets. “Well, it’s not as if we haven’t been here before, is it? You try to conquer the universe, I stop you, you feel very silly and shout a lot.” He shrugs. “Yeah, it gets a bit tedious after the first few hundred years, but what doesn’t?” He pauses, holding up a finger. “Slinkys. Never been bored when a Slinky was about.”

“What,” Davros says through gritted teeth, “is a Slinky?”

The Doctor blinks at him. “Wow. Little wonder you’re evil.”

Rose takes a step forward. “A Slinky is a toy, sir,” she says. “It’s—” She bites hard on her bottom lip, almost smiling. “It’s fun for a girl and a boy.”  
   
“Ah,” Davros says, “I understand. It is some sort of human sexual aide.” He touches Rose’s arm, claw-like fingers lingering on her sleeve. “Did you require one for your little jail cell seduction, or did his new human lusts overcome that famous Time Lord frigidity?” He chuckles, turning back to the Doctor. “I did promise to allow her a certain degree of privacy if she resorted to such a tactic. I regret now that I kept my word; I’m sure I would have received quite the education.” 

The Doctor smiles, darkly. “Whatever you have planned, Davros, I am going to stop you. Just so you know.”

Davros tilts his head to one side, amused. “On the contrary, Doctor – you will be the one to help me. You will help me for precisely the same reason Miss Tyler has stood by my side these many years.” His grip on her arm tightens, and she hides a wince. “Because you love, and it makes you weak.”

The Doctor rolls his eyes. “Oh, how original. I’ve certainly never heard that one before.” He takes a few steps toward the chair. “Let me guess: you’ll kill her unless I do whatever it is you need me to do.”

Davros twitches, and when he speaks again a thin thread of anger has woven itself into his even tone. “You misunderstand the situation, Doctor; I do not _need_ anything from you. You are here as entertainment – at most, perhaps, as a means of gaining some satisfaction, some _justice_ for the crimes you have committed against me during the long years of our association.” He calms slightly, his voice steadying. “And I have no intention of killing Miss Tyler. I have grown quite fond of her, in my way.” He smiles. “No, I will simply force you to watch as I torture her until her mind fractures. Then, when she is mad, I will let her torture you.” He nods at Rose. “In whatever manner she should deem fit.”

Rose is breathing slowly; her expression suggests that she is focusing on each inhale and exhale, and nothing more. “Sir,” she says, “don’t you think we ought to tell him what you want before we go discussing the consequences if he refuses?”

“That’s very practical advice, Miss Tyler. Thank you.” He releases her arm, and her eyes flutter closed in silent relief. He waves her on with a careless gesture. “Tell him what you like. In the end, he will do exactly as I say.”

Rose steps forward, her hands folded in front of her. She meets his eyes for the first time since he arrived on the ship. “You don’t seem very surprised,” she says. “That he survived. That he’s here.”

The Doctor shrugs. “I would have been surprised if he _hadn’t_ survived.” He looks past her, leveling a glare at the genocidal maniac in question. “You used an escape shuttle to follow the TARDIS through the Void, I suppose?”

Davros nods, obviously well pleased with his cleverness. “But of course.”

The Doctor shakes his head. “You’ve been here for years, not weeks. How far back did your emergency temporal shift take you?”

Davros’ smile turns sour. “Two decades,” he says. “It was…less than ideal.”

“Ah, but you had the slow corruption of the human race to entertain you. All that greed, all that temptation.” He turns back to Rose. “Morrison told me you were making good on your deal with the devil. I should have realised he meant it literally.”

Davros’ chair whirs as he glides closer. “Miss Tyler inherited our mutually beneficial arrangement from her predecessors. At first she was quite reluctant to enter my employ. She recognised me immediately for what I was – the creator of her darkest nightmares.”     
   
The Doctor stares at Rose, at the clean blankness of her face. “Well,” he says, “you have to admit that there’s a pretty strong resemblance.” He tears his gaze away, gesturing to the empty control room. “Speaking of your darling creations, where have all the little Daleks gone? Twenty years, that’s plenty of time to make yourself an army.” His lip curls slightly and he points in the general direction of Davros’ chest. “Unless you’ve run out gooey grey bits to harvest for cellular tissue, that is.” 

Davros glowers at him. “The Daleks were my greatest achievement, the perfect culmination of my genius.”

The Doctor grins. “But?”

“But their perfection – their freedom from weakness, from emotion – it made them… _difficult_ to control. In that respect, and in that respect alone, the denizens of Earth are superior.” He pauses. “Though I have found that I much enjoy bagels. Humans are pitiful creatures, but their baked goods are rather nice.” 

There is a short silence while the Doctor recovers from this most recent revelation and Davros, judging by his almost wistful expression, contemplates cream cheese and lox.

Rose clears her throat. “This ship was built to kill stars,” she says.

The Doctor frowns at her. “What does that mean?”

She meets his gaze evenly. “It means that he will travel from system to system, from galaxy to galaxy, will find every sun in every sky, and he will reduce them to cinders. No Reality Bomb, no army. Just good, old-fashioned frozen death for every living thing in this universe.” She looks down. “He wants you to watch while he does it.”  

Davros’ expression is almost gleeful. “And because dear Miss Tyler has proved so dedicated, so _instrumental_ to our cause, Earth will be spared. The human race survives, alone.” He cackles, madly. “Oh, but the sight of her must fill you with pride. Your weapon, finely honed, and now she is mine to wield, Doctor. Mine to do with as I will.”

The Doctor clenches his teeth, his heartbeat sickeningly heavy in his chest. “I sincerely doubt that.”

Davros seizes Rose’s arm, metal-tipped fingers piercing fabric and skin. She chokes back a cry of pain. The Doctor reaches for her, but she warns him off with a sharp shake of her head. Davros laughs. “You hear that, girl? He has faith in you still. He thinks he knows you.” A dark trickle of blood travels down her wrist, curling around her thumb. “Should I tell him, do you think? Should I tell him what happened to the people who stood in your way, to those who challenged your right to decide for a world, for a universe in which you’d never existed? Should I tell him why Mickey Smith really stayed behind?”

Rose closes her eyes, shuddering with pain. “Tell him whatever you want. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Davros releases her, and she staggers away, the fine black fabric of her sleeve wet with blood. The Doctor’s eyes are fixed on her face, but he speaks to Davros. “You know I can’t let you do this.”

“You can. You will.” Davros pauses. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

There is a low electric hum, a sizzle of power, and then blue light streams from Davros’ outstretched hand and slams into Rose’s chest, launching her into midair and pinning her to the wall. It holds her there, twisting and burning in the cold light, and she screams.

The Doctor doesn’t think. He is across the room, ready to throw himself in the beam’s path, when Davros chuckles and says, “Activate holding cell.”

The Doctor runs headlong into an invisible wall. He lands hard, gasping. “Stop,” he begs, eyes wide and transfixed by the terrible rictus of her mouth. “Whatever you want. Just stop.”

The blue light disappears, and Rose slides to the floor. She is suddenly, horribly silent.

His hands shake as he presses them against the stinging surface of the holding cell. “Rose?”

She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t move.

“Rose, are you—”

She coughs, and after a moment the cough turns to a wheeze. She raises her head, and her face is grey with pain. “Blimey,” she gasps. “I totally underestimated how much that would hurt.”  
   
This is simple, he thinks, curling his fingers into fists and trying to steady the shaking of his hands. Just another problem to solve. Davros is alone, madder and more stupidly arrogant than ever before, and while the ship around them may be deadly in its simplicity, he has a long history of turning such situations to his advantage. All he has to do is get Rose safely back to Earth and destroy the ship. The rest takes care of itself.

The details of this plan will come to him any moment, he’s sure.

He stands slowly, his hands raised in an obvious gesture of surrender. “All right. I’ll do whatever you want.”

Davros taps the tip of a finger against his chair controls. “Really. Will you.” He seems unimpressed.

“Yes, but first you have to send Rose back to London. She’s served her purpose.”

Blue light cuts through the air again, and this time her screams are different – thin and high and hopeless. They echo through the ship, and he feels their reverberation under his feet, in his bones. Bile rises in his throat.

The stream of light ends, but the scream continues for a moment longer, just one moment more before it ends in abrupt silence. She curls around her knees, her hair falling into her face, and he can hear the shudder of her breath.

Davros’ chair rolls forward. “I apologise for the interruption. You were attempting to negotiate, I believe?”

The Doctor closes his eyes. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

Davros nearly purrs with pleasure. “Excellent choice.” The holding cell evaporates. “Now,” Davros says, suddenly business-like, “you will walk to the main control panel and you will enter the coordinates for a system of your choice – an inhabited one, of course – and then, Doctor, _then_ you will destroy every star, and every world, in that system.” He grins, baring decayed teeth. “It will be our maiden voyage.”

He can’t do it. Can’t choose Rose over millions, over billions of lives. And no matter how much she’s changed, he knows she wouldn’t want him to.

He backs away from her huddled shape. “I’m sorry,” he says. He turns to Davros. “I refuse.”

“You sanctimonious _prick_.” Rose lifts her head, her eyes dark. “Do you really think that it matters who pulls the trigger? Every living thing in this universe is going to die; do you think they’ll die happier knowing your sainted hands are clean?”

It’s a long moment before he can speak. When he does, his voice shakes with anger. “My hands are far from clean, Rose.”

“Well, boo fucking hoo.” Her head falls back against the wall with a thump. “God, you’re a pitiful bastard. We know you blew up your stupid planet; shut up about it already. And I mean, seriously, what the hell kind of Destroyer of Worlds cries during sex? Oncoming Storm? Oncoming Sniffles, more like.”

Davros laughs, delighted. The Doctor stares at her, his anger turning to confusion.

He frowns. “Rose, I didn’t—” 

“Thank God I tranqed you before you could try to cuddle with me afterward. Just the thought makes me want to vomit.”

Afterward. She’d whispered to him, body warm on his, whispered in his ear and given him five numbers and no explanation, just a warning. _Remember this and don’t repeat it, not to me or anyone else._ Seven, seventy-nine, sixty-four, twenty-four, thirteen.

She’d whispered in his ear, and for once Davros hadn’t been watching.

Seven seven nine. Six four, two four, one three. They were coordinates. Coordinates she wanted him to enter into the warship’s navigation controls.

“Oh,” he says. “Well, that explains a few things.”  

“Miss Tyler is exaggerating her disdain for you,” Davros says, looking no less entertained. “No doubt she hopes to harden your heart against her, and in so doing ease your refusal of my demands. But make no mistake, Doctor – she is very much in love with you.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Human women are puzzling, irrational creatures.”

Rose struggles to her feet, leaning heavily against the wall. She speaks through clenched teeth. “He can help me, and he won’t. I think my reaction is perfectly bloody ration—”

She doesn’t scream, and her choked silence is so terrible he almost wishes she would. Wreathed in blue light she begins to shake, to convulse, and the moment he reaches her the light disappears. He catches her before she falls, her muscles still trembling. 

Her eyes are vacant and bright with tears. “Hi,” she says, clutching his collar. “I think I’m gonna fall down now.”

He swallows, hard. “Nah. I’ve got you.” He lowers her to the floor and sits, her head resting against his chest. “You’re really heavy, though.”

“Shut up.” She closes her eyes. “I don’t think your planet was stupid.”

His mouth brushes her hair. “I know.”

“Sorry I called you the Oncoming Sniffles. I didn’t mean it.”

“Rose—”

“Sorry,” she murmurs. Her breathing slows, and she goes limp, her cheek falling against his lapel.

Davros’ chair whirs as he approaches. “She’s unconscious.” He sighs. “Disappointing. I had hoped she’d last longer.” He pauses, watching them. “You do know that this is your fault.”

The Doctor looks up at him, pale and seething. “Why? Because I refused to slaughter billions of people to satisfy the delusions of a mad, leprous Muppet?”

“Because all of this could have been avoided if you’d only left her behind when she asked you to.” He smiles at the Doctor’s confusion. “Your Miss Tyler and I had a wager, you see. She agreed to take you into custody, to keep you until the preparations for our voyage were complete. She promised to imprison you, and I promised to let you go free – on one condition.” He glides closer, towering over him. “If you’d escaped Torchwood of your own volition, I would have let you go. If you’d left her, if you’d abandoned your curiosity, your fiendish need to _find_ and _answer_ and _fix_ , then you would be free, Earth would be safe, and Rose Tyler wouldn’t be dying in your arms.” He shrugs. “But then, maybe that’s something you enjoy. I don’t make judgments.”

The Doctor flushes, shaking with rage. “You knew. You knew I wouldn’t leave her.”

“No,” Davros says. “I knew that, for once in your life, you would be too afraid to run.”

Her hand rests limp against the back of his neck, a cool, grounding weight – until her thumb twitches, brushing the skin just under his collar. The twitch turns to a stroke, a deliberate caress. It raises the hairs on the back of his neck, and he suppresses a shiver.

“All right,” he says. “I understand.” He shifts Rose from his lap to the floor, cradling her head when her neck lolls bonelessly to one side. He stands, slides his hands into his pockets, and looks into Davros’ scarred, unseeing eyes. “I do what you want and you leave her alone. Agreed?”

Davros nods. “I am not an unreasonable man, Doctor. I only want what is owed me.”

The Doctor remembers the day Skaro burned, consumed by its own sun. He looks away. “Justice.”

“Yes,” Davros says, lingering over the sibilant. “Precisely.”

The Doctor turns and walks to the navigational controls. A monitor illuminates as he comes near, and a large, blinking cursor invites him to enter nine numbers – the coordinates of the first system to die. His fingers hover over the keys.

He could rip open the nearest maintenance panel and disable the ship in seconds. He could rig the transmat to send Rose home. He could trigger a massive explosion in the engines and let the whole thing burn. He could burn with it.

“I wouldn’t, if I were in your position,” Davros says. “You’d be dead before you’d touched the first wire.”

Perhaps not, then. 

He can see Rose out of the corner of his eye, her rumpled suit and the shallow rise and fall of her chest. He is certain that this is part of her plan, and that she trusts him to do as she asks. He does not know if he trusts her.

But he knows he wants to.

He types nine numbers _(seven seventy-nine twenty-four sixty-four thirteen, in his universe the coordinates of a system with one hundred billion people and only rudimentary defenses, and if he’s wrong about her he’s just killed them all)_ and he hits ‘enter’.

A window pops up on the screen. _Are you sure?_ it asks.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mutters. He hits ‘enter’ again, and the screen goes dark.

A moment later, every light on the ship does the same. A moment after that, the low rumble of the engines stutters and fades. There is silence.

The darkness echoes with Davros’ scream of outrage. “What,” he shrieks, “ _what_ have you done?”

A torch clicks on, and a thin beam of light illuminates Rose’s smile. “Not much, boss. Just took a little initiative during the ship’s construction, is all.” She steps away from the wall. “Hope you don’t mind; I thought there were some improvements to be made. Like, for example, a series of random numbers that would trigger the self-destruct sequence once they were entered into the ship’s computer.”

Davros slams his hand down on his chair’s controls. “This ship _has_ no self-destruct sequence!”

“That’s what you think.” She pauses, reaching out for the wall. “Doctor, now would be a good time to hold onto something.”

They hear the explosion before they feel it, a low, shuddering boom followed the sickening shriek of metal on metal. The floor begins to tremble.

The Doctor grips the computer console with both hands and looks up, meeting Rose’s eyes. “How long do we have?”

She bites her lip, suddenly looking very young. “Not long. Initiating the self-destruct cuts power to everything on the ship: the transmat, the escape shuttles—” Davros lets loose an incoherent cry of rage, and they turn to see him pointing futilely at Rose, waving his arm in frustration, “—the mad scientist’s glowy blue hand of death.” She glares at Davros, folding her arms over her chest. “Do you mind? We’re trying to have a conversation, here.”

There’s a splintering sound from below, and the ship pitches to one side. Davros’ chair slides across the floor into a wall, and Rose stumbles toward the computer console. The Doctor catches her.

“I think we may be sort of doomed,” she says, her arms around his neck. “Sorry about that.”

The Doctor snorts. “Us? Doomed? Hardly.” There’s another explosion, this time much closer. The floor rattles, and the observation window glows with light from the fires below. “Well. Maybe a little.”

She steps out of his arms, half-falling onto the console behind her. “Any ideas? Not that I’m expecting anything, mind you – I had this figured as a suicide mission from day one.”

He snatches the torch from her hand. “ _Any ideas_ , she says! As if I weren’t the king of ideas. The prince of plans. The emperor of extemporaneous escapage.” He frowns. “That’s not a word.”

“Not even a little bit, no.” She plucks Price’s lock pick from his suit coat pocket. “Think this might help?”   

He takes the small silver tube, pushing a small button on one side with his thumb. It glows white and emits a comfortingly familiar whir. “Very nice,” he says. He crouches down and unlocks the panels protecting the ship’s computer. “If we survive this, Dr. Price and I may have to swap recipes.”

Rose stands beside him, gripping his shoulder with one hand. “He really does prefer to be called Simon, you know.” 

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” Another explosion rocks the ship, and smoke begins to fill the room. The Doctor squints into the tangle of wires spilling from the open panel. “Well, isn’t this delightfully shoddy work.”

“Oh, ta. It’s not easy building a rubbish evil spaceship. We kept accidentally doing things right.” She looks down. “Hold on. Are you staring at my legs?”  

“No,” he says, lying.

She pokes his shoulder. “You so are. We’re about to die horrible fiery deaths and you’re looking up my skirt.”

“I am not. I am completely—”A cluster of wires begins to spark and he snatches his hand away just before his sleeve catches fire. “Completely focused on the task at hand. Distracted neither by your various womanly appendages nor by any slanderous comments or threats of bodily harm issued within my hearing.”

For Davros is still screaming, of course, laying out his plans for revenge in shrill, gory detail. _You will rue this day_ , et cetera et cetera. It’s the standard speech, and the Doctor has heard it so many times that now he barely bothers to listen. Davros’ chair is without power, wedged against the wall, and as the smoke rises it swallows him completely.

Rose coughs, the sound low and raw, and he looks up at her. Her hands are shaking. “You should sit down,” he says.

She shakes her head, covering her mouth with her sleeve. “I’m fine. Just a bit smoky in here.”

“Forget the smoke. Do you have any idea what exposure to that sort of electric pulse can do to a human brain?”

She blinks at him through watering eyes. “Yeah, I do. Three times over, as a matter of fact.” There’s no accusation in her eyes, but he still feels the sting of guilt. If he had trusted her sooner, if he had tried to understand—

A few lights on the computer console flicker to life. Faint life, but life nonetheless. He pops up onto his feet and his fingers fly over the keyboard. A wall on the far side of the room begins to crumble, and a fourth explosion sends thin fissures through the glass of the observation window. Light blazes outside, filling the control room with a hazy red glow. He spares a precious moment to look at her face.

“You’re going to hate me for this,” he says, “but I’m not sorry.”

There must be something telling in his eyes, because she grabs his arm. “No,” she says fiercely. “Don’t you dare, not again—”

He activates the transmat and the hand on his arm disappears. She’s gone. Safe.

“Good,” he says, slumping against the console, now dark. The floor beneath him begins to crack. “That’s good.”

There had been only enough power for one, and now the system is fried. The ship convulses, metal screaming against metal as it rips itself apart, and the air is hot and sharp with the smell of fire. He tips his head back against the console and hums a few bars of _Disco Inferno_.

Davros’ voice is soft, floating disembodied from the smoke. “You sacrificed yourself for her.”

“Yep. Now it’s just you and me, sunshine. Want to hug?”

Davros wheezes, and the Doctor hears the shriek of metal fingers against metal walls. “I will watch you die, Doctor. I will watch, and I will laugh.”

“Right,” he says. “I’ll take that as a ‘no’ on the hug, then.”  

He can almost see Earth in the distance, even through the smoke and shattered glass and the darkness beyond. A perfect blue-green blur against the black of space, and he thinks that a life lived there might not have been so bad after all. If things had been different, it might have been pretty much wonderful.

It can still be wonderful for her, he thinks. For her and everyone else. That’s what matters.

There’s a low, hacking cough from the other side of the room. “Crap,” Rose says. “I knew I should’ve changed my shoes.”

His legs feel like stone as he scrambles to his feet, the floor shaking beneath him. He’s so angry he can hardly speak. “Rose, you – you can’t—” he sputters. 

“Don’t thank me yet; I still haven’t decided whether I’ve come back to save you or to punch you in the face.” Her outline grows more distinct as she moves closer, stumbling over rubble and cracks in the floor. “God, you’re a pain in the arse sometimes. Lucky for you you’re such a great shag.” 

“How did you—” He pauses. “Great shag? Really?”

She jogs toward him, a dimension jumper in each hand. “Later, yeah? For now let’s just focus on not—” The floor ruptures beneath her, and she falls forward onto her knees. Still meters away, he runs toward her, and is still running when he hears the now familiar electric hum, sees Davros’ finger pointed his way and the blue light cutting through smoke _(siphoned off power from the transmat, of course, he should have known)_ and he has just enough time to regret the inanity of his last words before he hears the gunshot.

Rose stands not far away, the gun in her hand still raised. Davros is slumped in his chair, one neat hole in the middle of his forehead.

“I told him I would,” she says. “I told him.”

She drops the gun and stumbles away, breathing hard. She turns to him, face glowing red in the light of the window, and he remembers the girl she was, the girl who stood by his side and watched her world burn.

He takes a few careful steps toward her and picks up the dimension jumpers from the floor, holds one out for her to take. She does, and he slips his right hand into her left, weaving their fingers together. She looks up at him, and he nods.

They push the buttons together, and the last explosion sounds as they disappear.

++

When they reappear in Torchwood Tower they are no longer holding hands. They stand at one end of a long, white room abuzz with scientists, Dr. Price’s voice the loudest among them. They don’t seem to have noticed that anyone else is in the room.

“Oi!” Rose shouts, and they all snap to sudden, silent attention. One of them drops a test tube, and it shatters on the floor. They stare, unblinking, and it occurs to the Doctor that they’ve just returned from certain death, sweat-soaked, bruised, and coated in metallic ash. He winces a bit at the scrutiny, but Rose’s face is blank.

Price steps forward. “Director Tyler? Are you—”

“Davros is dead, and the ship is gone. There’s a list in the archive of all the technology that needs to be destroyed and wiped from the hard drives. I want it done immediately.”

Price touches her arm. “Rose?”

Rose flinches at the touch, and then her expression softens. “I’m okay. We’re okay.” She looks at the Doctor. “I think we’re gonna go now.” 

Price nods. “When would you like tomorrow’s status report?”

“Never,” she says. “I quit.” Price gapes at her, and she shrugs. “I was never really qualified, anyway.” She steps out of her high heels and walks barefoot out the door.

The Doctor shakes Price’s hand. “Really nice to meet you. I’m sure you’ll be a great director.” He pauses. “And if not – well, we’ll be around.” He nods in the direction of the broken test tube. “Oh, and you should probably get that cleaned up. Safety hazard, and all that.”

He follows her out the door.

++

Rose’s flat is the most boring place he’s ever seen.

She goes straight to the bathroom and wordlessly locks the door the moment they walk in, so he explores. One bedroom, one bath, and a tiny, spotless kitchen. Everything is beige or cream or taupe, colourless and neat and utterly without personality. Both the cupboard and the refrigerator are empty but for a half-used bottle of mustard and a large first-aid kit. He can’t imagine anyone living here, much less Rose. He wonders if she’s brought him to a hotel room by mistake, and begins to peer behind one of the drearier paintings, looking for bolts.

“What are you doing?”

She’s staring up at him, her arms crossed over her chest. He wishes she’d have the decency to look annoyed, or at least a little bit curious. Instead, her face is perfectly smooth. He hops down from the chair. “Checking for bolts,” he says.

“There aren’t any.”

“I thought there might be.”

“You were wrong.”

“Had to happen sometime.” She’s scrubbed her face and hands clean, her skin a little raw where she scrubbed too hard. Her suit is ruined, stained with ash and badly torn in places. He wonders what he must look like; there aren’t many mirrors in the flat. “Listen,” he says, but he stops when he can’t think of what to say next. He steps toward her, and she steps back.

She avoids his eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t really want to talk.”

“We don’t have to talk,” he says, and it sounds so much like a cheesy come-on that even he gets the joke when she cracks a smile. But it’s a nice smile, so he says, “Our bodies can do the talking for us,” and waggles his eyebrows.

She smothers her laugh with one hand. “Please don’t do that. It’s freaking me out.” 

He saunters toward her, wrapping one arm around her waist. “Ah, _cherie_. We do not need our mouths to speak the language of love.” He pauses. “Though in my experience they certainly help speed things along.”

She hugs him, throwing her arms around his neck and holding him so close that he aches with it, feeling the inexorable pull of her body against his – a pull like gravity, or something stronger. Her hand cups the back of his neck, cold and soft against his skin, and he pulls her closer.

“I missed this,” he says, and he can feel the sharpness of her chin as she nods against his shoulder.

“Me too. I never thought—” She stops and steps away, out of his arms. Then she begins to undress.

“Um. Rose?” Her suit jacket is a dark heap on the floor, and she’s already ripping through the buttons on her blouse. “Not that I’m not flattered, because I absolutely am – flattered, that is, and the other thing – but I’m not sure this is such a good idea.”

The blouse joins the jacket on the floor, and for a moment he’s too distracted by the pale lace of her bra to notice that her skirt is around her ankles. She kicks it off, and it lands by his feet. “I hate this,” she says, her voice ragged. “I hate this flat. I hate the furniture and the curtains and the stupid paintings without any bolts. I hate Torchwood, I hate my office, and I hate, absolutely fucking _hate_ these clothes.” She tears off her nylons. “I hated lying to you,” she says, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Hated every moment, but I didn’t have a choice. I had to preserve the timeline, and then I thought – I thought if I could just convince you that I’d changed, that I was different, I thought you would escape. I thought I could keep you safe.”

He reaches for her arm, curling his fingers around her elbow, and she stills at his touch. “You did,” he says. “I’m right here.”

“You almost died.” 

“And that’s unusual how, exactly?” He steps closer, pushing her hair out of her face. “You did what you had to do, Rose. I understand that.”

She looks away, unconvinced. “Yeah.”

There’s a short silence, and then he cocks his head to one side. “Wait a tic – are you saying that tearing all your clothes off just now _wasn’t_ an attempt to seduce me?”

She rolls her eyes. “Idiot.”

“If you insist.” He takes her hand and tugs her into the too-clean kitchen. He points to a chair. “Sit.”

She hops up onto the table, swinging her bare legs. “Let me guess. It’s time for my check up.”

He opens the cupboard and pulls out the first-aid kit. “Your arm is still bleeding.”

She looks down at the three small puncture wounds in her upper arm. She may as well have Davros’ handprint drawn on her skin. Probably would, once the bruises darkened. “Oh,” she says, her voice distant. “I’d forgotten.”

He washes his hands. “You’d have remembered when the adrenaline wore off.” He cleans and bandages the wounds quickly; her first-aid kit is well stocked. He washes his hands again, and then he leans back against the kitchen counter and watches her. 

The curtains are drawn against the setting sun, and in the cold electric light the shape and shadows of her face are foreign, almost unreal. Twenty-one days ago he’d stood in a faraway market, laughing with Donna and letting himself hope for the first time in a long time that he’d found some small, permanent piece of happiness. Now Donna is gone, and there is nothing so unfamiliar to him as his own heartbeat.

Then Rose scratches at the bandage on her arm, her nose wrinkling, and past and present realign themselves. He rolls his eyes and grabs her wrist. “Stop that.”

“But it _itches_.”

“Honestly, how old are you?”

She sticks her tongue out at him. “You tell me. I lost track ages ago.”

“My fault, I suppose.”

“Most things are.” She looks like she regrets the words the moment they leave her mouth, and he dreads hearing the apology he can already see in her eyes. He shakes his head, and she seems to understand. “It’s better this way,” she says quickly. “It’ll make it easier for me to lie ‘bout my age later on. Not really lying if I don’t know the truth, is it?”

“That’s the excuse I’ve always used.” Her eyes go wide, and he’s a little surprised himself. He rubs a hand over his mouth. “I think,” he says, “that I might be tired.”

This is a ridiculous thing to say, of course – he’s been tired for centuries. But now he craves a pillow and blankets and sleep, and he can tell by the slump of her shoulders that Rose feels the same. She slips down from the table and rests one hand on his arm, leaning into him. “Your suit is filthy,” she says.

“Then I’ll take it off.”

She nods, and they walk together into the bedroom, shedding clothes as they go. She collapses, naked, onto her bed, and he follows her. She curls into his side, and he pulls the duvet over their heads.

“Whoa,” she murmurs. “Who turned out the lights?”

He kisses her, unhurried and soft, but after a moment she pulls away, brushing cool fingers over his lips. 

“I wasn’t just pretending to be different,” she says. “You know that, right?”

He nods slowly, careful of what he says next. “I do.”

Her face is in shadow, the duvet draped over the curve of her cheek. He can feel her breath on his face, and she smells like ash and burning metal. Her eyes meet his, and even in the low light he can see the challenge in them. “I killed him. Didn’t even think about it – just pulled out my side arm and shot him, like it was the easiest thing in the world.”

“He was going to kill me.”

“I’m a good shot, Doctor. I’ve been practicing. I didn’t have to kill him to save you.” She presses her cheek into the pillow, letting her hair fall into her face. “I told him once about the first time I’d ever met one of his precious Daleks. Told him how I changed it, how one touch from me turned it into something totally new. I told him that it reached for the sunlight just before it died.”

He tucks her hair behind her ear, letting his fingers linger against her cheek. “What did he say?”

She doesn’t answer, and for a long moment he thinks she never will. Then she slides closer, arching against him, and he can feel the whisper of her mouth against his. “He said that if that one touch could change a Dalek, then it could change me too.” She watches his face, her eyes dark. “I wasn’t just pretending. I am different.” 

He touches her stomach, slides his hand along her skin until he can feel the beat of her heart against his palm, just under her left breast. “Good,” he says. “So am I.”

She exhales, a long, shuddering breath that he swallows, kissing her hard. Her hands clutch at the muscles of his back, at his hair, and he rolls her beneath him, pressing her into the bed. He ends the kiss, and she pants into his mouth, her eyes still closed.

“Did he know?” she asks, breathless. “When he left us here, did he know?”

He brushes his lips over her temple, the soft tremble of her eyelids. “No,” he says. “I don’t think he did.”

“Thank God,” she says, and she says it again when he moves inside her, her teeth grazing the skin of his neck. They are not careful of each other, not as they were before, and he can feel each bruise and strain as she touches him, bringing the day’s wounds to life. Her fingernails cut into his hip and he comes, silently.

She kisses his Adam’s apple. “Got a bit carried away there.” She smiles up at him. “Do we need the first-aid kit again?”

“I think I’ll survive, thanks.” He frowns. “You didn’t—”

“Yeah, you owe me one.” She yawns, pushing him onto his back and stretching over him. “I could sleep for a week.”

He runs his fingers through her hair. “A week sounds good.”

“Or a year.”

“Or five.” He hesitates, his hand stilling. “Rose, you said that you had—”

She rolls away, reaching for something on the bedside table. He hears a soft beep, and then a low, almost mechanical hum fills the room. It sounds like the TARDIS.

She rests her head on his chest. “Better?”

“Yeah,” he says. He closes his eyes. “Thank you.” 

She’s already asleep, her cheek over his heart.

++

The next morning he wakes up with the sun in his eyes, alone in bed.

Rose plops down next to him, pair of wickedly heeled shoes in one hand. She’s wearing jeans and a faded red t-shirt, and her hair is still half-wet and sticking up a bit on one side. “Hello,” she says. “I was wondering when you’d wake up.”

He rubs his hands over his eyes. “What are the shoes for?”

She tosses them over her shoulder and they land beside a large black bin bag overflowing with clothes. “I’m donating the lot,” she says. “Won’t need them where we’re going.”

He sits up. “And where is that, again?”

She kisses his cheek. “You need to shave. I went to the shop and picked up a few things; hope they’ll do all right.” She hops off the bed and turns to leave; then she stops, turning back. “Forgot to ask: do you know anything about flying a zeppelin?” 

He gives her an insulted look.

“Yeah, of course you do. Stupid question.” She turns to go again, but he reaches up and grabs her hand.

“Rose,” he says very slowly and very, very patiently, “where, exactly, are we going?”

She squeezes his hand, and he can see the horizon in her eyes. “Anywhere,” she says, and smiles.


End file.
